David Catron: Congress has duty to hold Obama to oath

Every member of Congress takes an oath to defend the Constitution. President Obama has declared war on that foundational document. He is systematically destroying the checks and balances the framers put...

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David Catron
Posted Feb. 24, 2014 @ 12:01 am

Every member of Congress takes an oath to defend the Constitution. President Obama has declared war on that foundational document. He is systematically destroying the checks and balances the framers put in place to limit the power of the office he holds.

The powers of the presidency were meant to be constrained by two co-equal branches of the government — the national legislature and the judiciary. President Obama routinely flouts inconvenient laws passed by the former and publicly excoriates the latter when its rulings displease him.

Much of what this man has done since taking office in 2009 is clearly illegal, and he is becoming more brazen about it every day. His most recent violation of the Constitution was his latest unilateral revision of the deadline by which businesses must conform to Obamacare’s employer mandate.

This mandate, according to the stipulations of the law, should have taken effect Jan. 1. However, that date proved politically inconvenient for the Democrats, so Obama ordered the deadline changed — twice — despite lacking any legal authority to do so.

What has been done by those with the power to stop to such illegal decrees?

Virtually nothing.

To remove a president from office, a two-thirds majority of the Senate must vote to convict him of charges emanating from the House impeachment process. However, impeachment itself is a separate step — roughly analogous to an indictment in a criminal court — and requires only a simple majority in the House. Today, the Republicans control that body by more than 30 seats. One or more articles of impeachment could be passed in the House without a single Democratic vote.

Why would Republicans pursue such a controversial course when they know the Senate will never produce the super-majority required to convict? That question is utterly irrelevant. If a policeman sees a thief picking your pocket, should he stand by and ponder the very real possibility that some clever defense attorney might help the criminal escape justice?

Of course not.

Obama would say, “I am not a crook.” But the president’s catalog of crimes is so long that one hardly knows what to highlight.

Perhaps a good place to begin is with fiats like his latest rewriting of Obamacare. These decrees have quite unnerved George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a liberal who voted for Obama twice. Turley recently wrote: “What we’re seeing now is the usurpation of authority that’s unprecedented in this country . . . a system in which a single individual is allowed to rewrite legislation . . . is a system that borders on authoritarianism.”

Obama’s latest illegal change to Obamacare is, of course, only one of many. According to the Galen Institute, his administration has unilaterally rewritten this law no fewer than 18 times since April 2011. And his revisions of law have by no means been limited to the ironically titled Affordable Care Act. The president and the Department of Homeland Security have also unconstitutionally rewritten our immigration laws, issuing exemptions to a law that bars the entry of asylum-seekers and refugees who provided material support to terrorists.

His Internal Revenue Service was used to harass and weaken his political enemies. And his National Security Agency is even now collecting data on millions of private citizens.

If none of these things render you receptive to impeachment, let’s return to Professor Turley. He is also very concerned about the “tour de force of an imperial presidency” by which “Obama claims the right to be able to kill any American based on his sole judgment and discretion.” And still Congress snores.

Such congressional somnolence is as new to this country as are Obama’s experiments with authoritarianism. Members of Congress have traditionally been very jealous of their power, and in past times would have been considerably less supine in their dealings with such a power-mad president.

The House of Representatives has impeached two presidents (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) and seriously considered impeaching a third (Richard Nixon).

The Republicans’ inaction is not about votes in the House. It’s about cowardice. The GOP is more concerned for its short-term political prospects than the long-term good of the Republic.

Sadly, there is a precedent for this and where it leads. The Roman Emperor Tiberius once alluded to it, in commenting on the moral cowardice of those who had let Rome’s powerful Senate be emasculated, leading to dictatorship: “Those men are fit to be slaves.”

If our elected representatives in Congress don’t do something about Obama, they will be regarded by posterity with equal scorn.

David Catron is a health-care finance consultant who has spent more than 20 years working for and advising hospitals and medical practices. A longer version of this piece originally appeared on the website of The American Spectator (www.spectator.org).